Look, let's be honest: we have a domestic indie game blending the settlement management of RimWorld with the brutal expeditions of Darkest Dungeon. Developed by CanOpener, Dungeon Settlers first broke cover in January 2024 via its Steam store page, before turning heads in June during the Steam Next Fest by landing firmly among the 50 most-played demos.

To hear firsthand from the team behind a title born out of the frustration of games offering exclusively management or exclusively combat, we met CanOpener CEO Moon Hyeong-woo in Gasan Digital Complex. Moon walked us through everything from the conceptual design and lore to the intricate plumbing connecting settlement management and dungeon crawling, alongside post-launch player reception and the roadmap ahead.

CanOpener is a five-person development outfit currently building the upcoming Dungeon Settlers. The crew comprises CEO and planning lead Moon Hyeong-woo, three programmers, and a single art specialist. Most of the roster bonded during their university days in CN, a game development club at Chung-Ang University.

The studio's moniker takes a cheeky cue from the slang term for cat owners. Much like how humans and felines possess entirely different palates, the name reflects a firm commitment to crafting deliverables that suit the tastes of consumers rather than the creators themselves. As Moon Hyeong-woo explains: "We chose the team name to ensure we think strictly from the customer's perspective and tailor our games to their exact tastes."

Following military service, Moon Hyeong-woo discovered a distinct joy in running tabletop RPG sessions as a Game Master, which eventually sparked the ambition to make video games professionally. Post-discharge, Moon Hyeong-woo joined a major domestic development studio as a project manager, later pivoting to a producer role out of a fierce craving to dive into programming directly. However, when the company shifted its overarching direction, Moon Hyeong-woo decided the new corporate climate simply did not fit, ultimately resigning to become an indie developer.

Dungeon Settlers began life as a humble practice project before junior club members jumped on board to help morph it into a fully-fledged commercial undertaking. "It started as practice, but we realized this was a game worth carrying all the way to the finish line," Moon Hyeong-woo notes, adding, "Naturally, my burning desire to write code myself played a major part too."

Dungeon Settlers is a strategy simulation game fusing settlement management with labyrinth exploration. You step into the boots of an expedition leader, constructing a forward operating base near a portal and raising recruits to obliterate the dungeon's core. The core structure demands that you handle both dungeon crawler combat and unit micro-management.

The overarching lore leans quite dark and unapologetically hardcore. An ancient imperial research facility somehow gained sentience and warped into a dungeon, sucking the vitality out of the surrounding lands via portals to render them completely uninhabitable. With portals multiplying and the world hurtling toward apocalypse, a guild steps up to halt the madness. This gives narrative justification to the dual loop of managing occupied territory while delving into dungeons. For instance, when the topsoil loses its life force and kills crop yields, you have to haul vitality-rich clay back from the dungeon just to farm and secure food supplies. In short, the spoils of labyrinth exploration directly dictate the survival of your settlement.

Settlement management naturally dictates the flow of combat. Inside the dungeons, dropped items yield raw materials rather than finished weapons and gear. Consequently, the resources you choose to consume back at the settlement dictate your units' stats and loadouts. "Among the many games trying to marry settlement management with combat, precious few managed to strike a balanced fusion," Moon Hyeong-woo remarks. "We were craving that kind of experience, which is why we started building Dungeon Settlers."

This philosophy shines through in the stamina-based combat and action mechanics. Recruits drain stamina from the moment they wake up, whether they are performing chores around the village or firing off skills in the thick of battle. "If you decide to blow all your stamina on flashy combat skills, you pay for it through a deficit in your management metrics," Moon Hyeong-woo explains. "It's designed to force players into making hard choices." Similarly, using rare magic stones to reroll stats upon leveling up is another deliberate friction point meant to keep you agonizing between combat and logistics.

Instead of hopping on the recent turn-based bandwagon or leaning into familiar real-time action, Dungeon Settlers adopts a real-time with pause system. It is an approach famously championed by classic CRPG developers behind titles like Baldur's Gate 2, designed to capture the best of both action and turn-based worlds. Of course, it comes with the caveat of lacking the instant feedback of real-time action and the micro-tactical precision of turn-based systems.

Explaining the reasoning behind this choice, Moon Hyeong-woo points to the desire to avoid jarring disconnects with the management simulation side, where villagers scurry about performing duties non-stop. "If we went turn-based, you'd have time flowing in real-time back at the settlement only to screech to a halt every time you enter a dungeon, killing the momentum," Moon Hyeong-woo notes. "Colony sims give you a unique joy in just watching your little ant farm hum along, and we didn't want to disrupt that flow."

This pause-and-play combat sits atop a tangled web of progression systems. Every time party members level up, their stats grow randomly and they unlock new skills. Because the skill pool is so vast, your choice of background and abilities drastically swings your combat efficacy. "We figured the more backgrounds we introduce, the more variables players get to play with," Moon Hyeong-woo says, noting the team's philosophy to stuff in as many options as fit the concept. Looking ahead, a dagger-focused tree specializing in stealth and multi-hit combos is currently under consideration.

With so many backgrounds on the table, crafting each class requires delicate juggling to ensure nothing becomes a game-breaking jack-of-all-trades, though players still manage to dream up unexpected synergies. "The Nature tree, which summons buildings, and other utility-heavy trees were absolute nightmares to balance," Moon Hyeong-woo admits, "though players occasionally pull off combinations that generate far more synergy than we ever anticipated."

Dungeon Settlers drew rave reviews and widespread attention during June's Steam Next Fest. That momentum carried straight into its early access launch on September 4, pulling in crowds of eager players. While the community praised its distinct character building and the organic fusion of management and combat, critics pointed out that the sheer volume of content still feels a bit light.

The developers are well aware of the feedback and have marked it as their most urgent priority. "Now that the core foundational systems are mostly in place, our goal is to roll out more content as fast as humanly possible," Moon Hyeong-woo states. With a full commercial release targeted for the third quarter of 2028, the team will continue the ongoing grind of adding flesh to the skeletal framework.

Alongside quantitative expansion, qualitative depth remains a continuous target. "Even if things aren't perfectly balanced, our primary focus is expanding the content catalog," Moon Hyeong-woo emphasizes, while reassuring fans that game-breaking imbalances will still receive gradual tweaks. The team is also exploring quality-of-life additions, such as letting players lock certain stats during rerolls to alleviate player friction.

As Moon Hyeong-woo signs off: "We are closely reading all the feedback coming in through various channels, and we plan to keep pushing updates to address your thoughts, so please keep watching us. We know the content feels sparse right now, and the team acknowledges that fully. Delivering plenty of things to enjoy is our homework, and we'll keep updating to make it happen."